And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead are an established gonzoid rock band that scoff in the face of conventional measures and boldly go where no band has gone before so scrappily, so consistently, so loudly. A gaggle of Pearl-fueled Texans from Austin, these boys have steadily built an unthreatened reputation as America’s most unapologetically destructive rock & roll experience, replete with the shameless disposal of musical machinery onstage and — to the untrained ear — in the studio as well. The have a system, and it does not fail. Their music is an ear-splitting sendup of feedback and crash-on-the-racetrack riffs, which draws heavily from the era of Sonic Youth’s Sister, while their lyrics call to mind a marriage between horror-movie moments with op-ed-page cynicism; “Mark David Chapman” is an example of such campy outrage. At a point wherein Sonic Youth has achieved little more than short-curve hairpin experimentation, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead are fueled with a zestier and more intrusive desire to split instrumental hairs. The instruments are interestingly distinct, defining a need to listen to the individual contributions, furthering the contemplative nature of late-’90s hard rock and its idiosyncratically conservative send-ups. The Dead are a max-out outfit in the true hardcore tradition. – Becky Byrkit